Gaming 2010: The year we go bankrupt

Ah the year two-thousand and ten! The promise of so many new great things! I for one hope the economy picks up, otherwise I’ll probably have to take a second job in order to afford all the shiny new gaming things coming down this year.

Magic The Gathering will release its next set: Worldwake in February, there is currently a visual spoiler ( http://www.wizards.com/Magic/TCG/Article.aspx?x=mtg/tcg/worldwake/spoiler ) up at WotC’s website. I gotta say when they said Zendikar (and subsets) would be ‘the land block’ I had my doubts, but it’s pretty clear that the Magic team knows what they’re doing, I’m pretty excited over Omnath, My enemies will fear his pet Feral Hydra.

Perhaps more interesting is the buzz around the set following Worldwake, which has been anounced as “Rise of the Eldrazi” This set will thematically fit into the Zendikar storyline, but is itself a stand-alone large set. This situation will be somewhat reminiscent of the Lorwyn/Shadowmoor Superblock, At least as far as the amount of cards that will be extended legal between mid 2010 and early 2011.

Lastly on the Magic front,  June will see the release of Archenemy. This new product follows Planechase’s footsteps in that it is a modular additio that enhances (or complicates) a standard game of magic. In Archenemy several players team up against one single other player. Which will be good, because there’s that one show-off in my crew that we all want to beat, so now we can all team up against him, and he still gets to show off while I feralhydra him to death. Win/Win.

If you’ve been listening to Critical Hit (And if you haven’t, what’s wrong with you?) you know that we get pretty excited over new D&D books. February of 2010 brings us Martial Power 2, which I hope smooths out some of the (admittedly small) issues with the first Martial Power. Rangers, Rogues, Fighters and Warlords will benefit greatly.

Slated for March is The Player’s Handbook III, featuring the psionic power source as well as new divine and primal options. Finally, you’ll get to play your Minotaur Monk that’s been burning a hole in your concept bin since Fourth Edition popped up. Is that just me? It is? Oh, ok.

There’s a lot of speculation over the contents of the Dark Sun Campaign Setting, It promises new races and new class builds. Dark Sun was one of the definitive 2nd edition settings and is now being updated for fourth edition, will it live up to the hype? Probably, especially since the PhB3 is setting it up ahead of time.

In other news, fairly reliable sources sigh in an exasperated fashion and assure me that White Wolf’s Manual of Exalted Power: Alchemicals, will… probably… be released in February of 2010. Let’s hope it sticks this time, I think Amazon’s had it for pre-order for a year now.

So there’s some stuff for you to look forward to, and for your wallet to dread.